AP Almost Gets Something Right... But Then Gets It Wrong
from the so-close... dept
Zachary Seward over at the Nieman Lab is revealing more of the AP's "top secret" plan to figure out this darn web thing. Following the plan to hold back some content from its members, the latest installment is focused on trying to attack Wikipedia's search dominance with its own SEO play: creating "landing pages" designed to be the definitive destinations on certain topics, with the idea of using inbound links from partners newspaper sites to goose the Google juice and shoot them to the top of the list.Now, as a first pass, this is actually not a bad idea. Creating compelling topic pages that become the main source for people to go to is a good strategy. The problem is that it's just not that easy. A bunch of other sites have tried to do the same thing and have failed miserably. Many of these are startups, obviously, but even Google itself tried to do something similar with its Google Knol offering, and that's been a massive disappointment. And it has the inside scoop on how to get good PageRank.
Even worse, as Felix Salmon points out, the AP seems to think that these pages should be autogenerated! Yes, the AP seems to think the way to take on Wikipedia is with a computer spitting out spam SEO-trap pages. Wow. The biggest asset (and yes, it's a huge asset) that the AP has is the wealth of knowledge in the heads of all of its reporters. They could actually create some very useful definitive content pages... but instead they're going to hand it over to computers to autogenerate? Talk about missing the point...
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Filed Under: journalism, landing pages, news, seo, topic pages, traffic
Companies: associated press, wikipedia
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AP's idea may in fact work out, at least it is likely to get AP somewhere near the top of the search engines in many cases. The combination of "always fresh" content, incoming links from sites with good PR (and on topic), and a clean structure might just work out. If anything, it is the exact opposite of what you have been crapping on the news industry about for months about paywalls and walled gardens.
AP could make a machine that prints money, and you would complain that the $100 bills coming out are wrinkled.
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If they want to truly attack the topic space from a Wikipedia angle, then they need to have dedicated staff nurturing & tending to each topic manually. This means getting and organizing stories from their reporters and getting experts to contribute insight into the news.
So, not retyping stories, but more becoming an editor of the topic. Treat the page as a continuously evolving news story.
For example: The Iraq War. They could have set-up a topical page full of hand selected & nurtured stories relating to the war, and organized by a human (not computer algorithms) to build on each other and create a story. Also, this person would recognize holes and attempt to get reporters or experts to fill in information or stories to create a complete picture. The page wouldn't be changing constantly, but would essentially paint a big picture view through a combination of in-depth investigative (and longer lasting) reports with shorter in-the-moment (and faster cycling) news stories. All brought together through expert analysis pretty charts & graphs, photo albums, user comments, editorials, timelines, and any number of elements of information at their disposal.
It takes work, and it sounds like the AP wants the quick way out by hiring a programmer to making a website to do all that for them. Wikipedia has thousands of writers and editors nurturing and caring for each page because they are passionate about that topic. If the AP wants to compete on the Wikipedia topic side, they need to leverage the human aspects at their disposal. The computer algorithm approach will put heat on the pure news aggregators, but they aren't doing well on search results or in revenue, so why model after them in the first place?
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Well, that's what ignorance does to you. It'll be interesting to see if they learn from this mistake, and realize their ignorance of the internet and search engines. More than likely, they'll just bluster some more.
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If the script pulls 10 AP stories on healthcare, half of each story will be 50% background information that is in the other 9 stories. Redundancy like that is appreciated in print, not on the Web.
Also, as someone who has access to AP's wire. Their "relevant stories/photos/graphics/video" application is laughable.
"Would you expect a group of people sitting around manually retyping stories?"
No. But it would be nice if a person were checking the boxes next to each story that would attached to any given topic.
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Wikipedia does it will millions of contributors. I don't picture the AP hiring 40 - 100 people to sit around just playing with already published stories.
It is a service that is potentially useful, and certainly leverages the information they have in a useful way.
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This ship has sailed
Then I beta tested MyYahoo, and it WAS my own personal newspaper.
My point is that like most of the newspaper industry, the AP has become a bit player in a business that they once owned. And while this idea is the best one they've come up with yet, it's a decade late.
The AP is struggling for relevance in world of free information. And by blocking/charging for/restricting information, they will become increasingly irrelevant.
My prediction is that in a year or so, you'll see the AP move to a more Wikipedia-like format where more people are allowed into their distribution channel as both creators (expert bloggers) and consumers (aggregator blogs). But that will only be after the company has been de-valued by half again. And they'll be struggling not to stay relevant, but to stay alive.
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I don't get it?
The answers to this question would answer if it's even possible. The latter is vary possible, Google douse it already. The former is not. Not without hundreds of people or artificial intelligence.
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Re: I don't get it?
So what's the issue? They're trying to do it through link-farming and keyword spamming.
Yup. AP's website removed from Google indexes in 3...2...1...
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heh
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Wait for it...
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Knol
Hmm, maybe the AP should buy about.com and jump off from there? Or maybe Google should, and blend it with knol?
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I could be wrong...
If AP isn't getting the hits, this won't help that much.
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AP news?
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